Beautiful Victorian Celestial Illustrations

The Voyager missions started sending back amazing photos of our solar system right about the time I was old enough to understand what they were. Previously, cameras had given us somewhat grainy views of our neighbors in space, so it’s hard to imagine a time when most of what everyone saw of the heavens (in any detail) were left up to an artist’s interpretations. Some stunning examples of this can be seen in this collection of chromo-lithographs that depict planets, comets, the moon and sun.

All are based on astronomical observations, and the results are stunning. It’s pretty amazing how detailed and accurate many of them are, given that we now have hi-res photos of many of the same subjects to compare them to.I’d love to have a framed set of these.